nDreams, the veteran VR studio, today announced it was acquired by video gaming group Aonic for $110 million.
The Farnborough, UK-based nDreams has changed a fair bit since its founding in 2006. Having taken up VR game development full-time in 2013, the studio went on to release a slew of VR titles complimenting nearly every major headset release, including games such as The Assembly (2016), Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), Fracked (2021), and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord(2023).
The acquisition by Aonic follows a $35 million investment from the group in March 2022, which at the time helped nDreams expand its publishing wing in addition to allowing the studio to grow to 250 employees strong across its family of studios, including Elevation, Orbital and Near Light.
Since then, the company has underwritten a number of VR games, such as Little Cities (2022) and Powerwash Simulator VR (2023).
The studio says it’s not changing its commitment to VR and MR gaming, but rather continuing to expand its position in XR even further. Studio co-founders Patrick and Tamsin O’Luanaigh are also remaining in their positions alongside the rest of the company’s executive team and board.
The acquisition however will allow nDreams to collaborate with Aonic’s family of game studios, such as Warren Spector’s OtherSide Entertainment, Milky Tea, and Bkom Studios.
nDreams says it’s also looking at investment opportunities in third-party publishing titles as well as possible studio acquisitions.
It’s been a while since we first busted ghosts in VR, but this time around veteran VR studio nDreams and Sony Pictures Virtual Reality are serving up an at-home co-op game for Quest and PSVR 2 that will finally let you strap on a proton pack and go head-to-floating-head with a good variety of belligerent specters. Check out our review below to see if it’s worth getting the whole squad involved.
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord Details:
Available On: Quest, PSVR 2 Release Date: October 26th, 2023 Price: $35 (Standard), $55 (Full Containment Edition) Developer: nDreams Publisher: Sony Pictures Virtual Reality (SPVR) Reviewed on: Quest 2
Gameplay
Here’s the breakdown: you’re busting ghosts in San Francisco (as you do) and the Ghost Lord shows up to wreak havoc on the city. Work your way through a bunch of random missions and periodically report back to HQ for a few drips of the game’s narrative, presented via a TV screen where you’ll learn what happened to some obviously evil billionaire type who totally isn’t an evil Ghoul King, Specter Sovereign, Poltergeist Potentate, or anything of the sort. Ok, so it’s pretty clear the narrative isn’t the star of the show here, as it really only sets the scene for casual drop-in, drop-out co-op matches, which last anywhere from 10-15 minutes each.
Of course, you can go it alone in offline mode with the help of the game’s admittedly competent AI, or team up with friends or strangers for more fun and firepower. That said, you really should consider banding together with a few buddies (from two to four players) and tackling it all the way through together.
Image captured by Road to VR
It feels very much in the same vein as After the Fall (2021), which we called “VR’s best stab at Left 4 Dead,” although I think there’s an argument to be made for keeping pace with your friends in the game as you all earn successive upgrades, letting you form a real team that makes the most of each upgrade path. That feels more like Ghostbuster’s intended sweet spot, as opposed to randomly dropping in with whoever’s online, quietly grinding missions for money and maxing all upgrade paths indiscriminately, and then beating the titular Ghost Lord a bunch of times. There is some competition in there to get more points, but in the end it’s really a team effort.
Image captured by Road to VR
Although I compare it to After the Fall, this isn’t really the same sort of horde-based shooter, because frankly the proton pack isn’t really a gun. There’s also no ammo pickups and no loot to pick up besides some random ecto goo that gives you the ability to upgrade stuff later, such as unique weapon attachments for things like single-use shotguns blasts and short-lived turrets. You can fire your proton stream continuously if you want, and then lasso the poor ghosties forever too—provided you learn how to properly operate the thing. More on that below.
The game also doesn’t really expect you to fail that much either since anyone in your party can always revive you once you’re down with a simple high five. Instead, your main focus is earning cash by completing missions which are placed across seven massive and circuitous maps, each of which allow you to play a random mix of four mission styles: Exorcism, On the Clock, Giga Trap Retrieval, and Harvester. In order, it’s basically a wave mode with the same mini-boss, a timed wave mode, a bomb escort mission, and a wave mode with light puzzle elements.
The big question I always ask myself in these sorts of random mission-driven games is whether both the action and upgrades will be enough to bring me back for more on a consistent basis. I felt the game doled out an okay assortment of both, although it all feels like it’s missing an overall structural direction to keep me engaged in the long-term. You only get three missions to choose from at a time, which are then shuffled randomly again once you’re back at HQ, making it difficult to get a sense of how you’re progressing, save a computer screen that really doesn’t do a great job of making you feel like you’re moving toward an actual goal besides “DONE”.
Image captured by Road to VR
Despite the increasing mix of standard baddies as you move through to 100 percent completion, which means you’ve beaten 42 missions, about halfway through things start to feel a little samey. There just aren’t enough mini-bosses, and it just isn’t clear how long it will take to get to the main boss; you just have to keep playing random missions until the game decides you’ve had enough and can actually move forward.
That said, I generally liked the assortment of regular enemies, although I wish there were a greater variety of mini-bosses to provide a bump in difficulty beyond just having ‘more of everything all at once’. Normal enemies include a conventional assortment of ranged and melee types, with smaller types usually zapped into oblivion with a few seconds of the standard blast from the proton pack. The larger, more often ranged types require not only a constant blast from your proton pack, but also need to be lassoed into your handy dandy trap.
Melee types are typically smaller and weaker, and are mostly just annoying to deal with as you go in for the real ghosts worth nabbing in any given level.
Here’s how lassoing works, which is key to dispatching larger, more deadly ghosts: a shield bar on the right of ghosts depletes with a standard blast, while the health bar on the left indicates how much the enemy needs to be jerked around with your proton-lasso in order beat it unconscious and then drag it into your trap, which gobbles it up automatically. Wear out the specter, shoot out your trap nearby, and let the wonders of technology do the rest. This is actually pretty satisfying as a VR specific thing, as you wildly follow the ghost as he helplessly flails around looking for a hiding place to recover health. Springing the trap with your left hand and shooting the proton pack with the right is about as Ghosbusters as you can get.
Image captured by Road to VR
About an hour into playing, I also figured out I could just point my proton stream at the floor to spam the game’s most important tool: the boson dart,which is basically just a big blast that keeps your proton pack from overheating and being inoperable for a bit. Activating the boson dart didn’t feel intuitive at first—something I chalk up to some pretty aggressive pop-up messages in the early game that made it personally difficult for me to concentrate on the task at hand. I ended up just jogging through whatever was asked of me in the tutorial so I could figure it out later in my own time. Really. Pop-ups are so big and offputting.
I digress. Using the boson dart is actually pretty simple, although easy to ignore at the beginning since you don’t really need it until you meet the game’s main mini-boss, the Bruiser. Simply mash a button right before your proton stream overheats to activate a powerful blast that knocks ghosts down a bar or two on their health meter.
Once you get a handle on each enemy type, you start to see colored variants that have slightly different powers. Whatever the case, I found that strategy really only boiled down to constantly strafing around the map, keeping the trigger down, and blasting boson darts until everything—regardless of ability—was toast. Avoid shit flying at you and don’t stand in one spot too long. Everything else is gravy.
Image captured by Road to VR
Protip: If you like playing random missions every once in a while, and aren’t really concerned about getting to the final boss, you can probably just invest your cash in all of the upgrade pathways just to see what’s out there. If you’re looking for more focused playsessions though, it’s probably better to pick one specific upgrade style and max it out from the onset.
Once all is said and done in a mission, and all of the ghosts are trapped or otherwise zapped to dust, your only choice is to keep playing random missions, or maybe the single-player mixed reality mini-game, Mini-Puft Mayhem, which is a fun little boss battle against a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s worth a few minutes of your time, if anything just to see a giant marshmallow rip the ceiling off your house, but not integral to the rest of the game.
Again, if there were any such game, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord would definitely be the one you and a few other friends would buy and exclusively play together—not because you really need a bunch of active communication to play, but that the game is pretty random enough without having a good buddy by your side to give you a reason to drop back in, and keep grinding until you get to the massive Ghost Lord battle.
Image courtesy nDreams, SPVR
Immersion
Is Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord perfect? No. It has enough variety and fun, provided you’re with a good group of people. Playing alone is the worst-case scenario though, and probably isn’t advisable if you don’t want to hit a wall halfway through when missions start to be a little bit a trudge. Still, it’s actually a pretty solid basis for what could be some interesting DLC, which I hope will help minimize some of the weaker points I mentioned above. So don’t get me wrong: Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is basically a fun and well-made game that just lacks a little bit of scaffolding and boss variety to be a real winner.
One thing it definitely has out of the gate though is looks. Even with the humble Quest 2, the game is pretty dang awesome looking. It has a swath of dense and richly decorated set pieces, and character animations are expressive, feeling straight out of a cartoon. Ok, so there’s no Slimer, but there are Slimer-adjacent characters that mostly do the job.
Image courtesy nDreams, SPVR
It’s more than looks though. You’d be surprised how many VR multiplayer games there are out there that really don’t understand that players instinctually want to interact with other people naturally, like, say, handing something to someone without having to throw it on the ground first, or being able to give them a high five for a job well done. That’s all here and then some. Playing in co-op mode, Road to VR’s Ben Lang stepped into something of a mine in the form of a Stay Pufft mini-marshmallow bag that explodes the little buggers everywhere when you get close, rendering your equipment inoperable until you pluck away the pests.
He still had three on his proton pack still jumping around and squeaking about. My first instinct was right. Just grab the little suckers and toss them away like picking lice from a fellow chimp! Or crush him with an iron fist and hear revel in their tiny, diabetic lamentations.
A small-ish sore spot is the games avatars, each of which only have three unlockable looks a piece, with no individual customization as such. I would have also liked to see a more customizable HQ, which would make hosting a game much more immersive since you could show off trophies or decorations to your friends when you invite them for matches.
Comfort
As a veteran VR studio, nDreams knows the score. Offer everything, including snap-turn, quick turn, smooth turn, teleportation. The list is below. It has it all. The only advisory I’d give is the game naturally makes you strafe a good deal, so if you’re particularly susceptible to motion sickness, experiment with the game’s variable blinders to make this less jarring.
Synapse is the latest action game from veteran VR studio nDreams, built exclusively for PSVR 2. While you’ll do plenty of shooting, players are also equipped with a telekinetic superpower that feels great as a core mechanic. But does the rest of the game live up to it? Read on to find out.
Synapse Details:
Available On: PSVR 2 (exclusive) Release Date: July 4th, 2023 Price: $35 Developer: nDreams
Gameplay
Editor’s Note: Gameplay clips may not appear with cookies disabled, click ‘View clip’ to see them in a separate window.
Synapse is a roguelite shooter where you’ll be blasting baddies with a weapon in one hand and controlling a telekinetic force power with the other. The game’s telekinesis ability is finely tuned, relying on PSVR 2’s eye-tracking to target whichever item you’re looking at. Look at a box and pull the trigger and suddenly you’re controlling its movements from afar. Look at an exploding barrel and pull the trigger and now you can toss it over to some enemies before pulling the trigger even harder to make it explode. Oh, and when you eventually get the ability to pick up enemies with your power, you’ll really enjoy launching them into the sky or send them crashing into the ground.
Over many years I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen a major VR game built around a ‘gravity gun’ like mechanic. It seems so natural to want to interact with virtual worlds using interesting physics mechanics rather than just shooting.
Well Synapse definitely proves out the mechanic with a strong core implementation that feels a little bit like magic thanks to the eye-tracking targeting which generally works well (just don’t forget to recalibrate your eye-tracking). It’s undeniably fun to look at an enemy, pick them up, and send them flying to a timely demise.
I also enjoyed the use of a two-stage trigger when it comes to manipulating explosive barrels—a light trigger pull lets you lift the barrel, while a full trigger pull makes it explode. It feels very intuitive while at the same time challenging you to think more carefully in the heat of battle about which object you’re controlling. It can feel effortless to see a barrel on the other side of the room, pick it up, then quickly hover it over to a group of enemies before crushing it to blow them away.
While I was hoping that there would be an increasing number of ways to interact with the environment using telekinesis, there’s little evolution on that front. You can control boxes, barrels, platforms, and (with later unlocks) enemies and grenades. But that’s about it. While the core mechanic feels great, it’s unfortunate that it doesn’t evolve into something more.
In your other hand you’ll start with a pistol which is about as standard as you’d expect, though nDreams adapted the great reloading system from Fracked to give Synapse an even quicker and easier reloading system that works great for the game’s combat pace.
When you’re out of ammo the mag will eject just a few inches out of the gun and then stay there. To reload all you have to do is push it back into the gun. It sounds a little silly, but makes sense in the context of the game’s mind-bending subject matter. And another nice detail (which I can’t recall if the game even explicitly teaches you) is that your hand doesn’t need to be the thing that pushes the mag back into your weapon to reload… you can shove your gun against a wall or a rock to slide it back in too—a clever way to allow for an improvised one-handed reload.
Reloading by pushing your mag against a wall works especially well considering the game’s hand-based cover system (also carried over from Fracked), which allows you to reach out to grab any cover and then use your hand to peek yourself in and out of said cover. It feels really natural and way more immersive than using the thumbstick to slide in and out of cover while crouched behind a wall.
As a roguelite there’s also unlocks to earn; some are temporary buffs that only last for your current run, while others are permanent and will make you better and stronger over time.
Everything I’ve said about the game so far is pretty positive, and warranted. But the game follows a strangely familiar pattern of flaws.
The thing about Synapse is that while the core mechanics (like telekinesis, reloading, and cover) work well, the rest of the game is a largely average wave shooter in the form of a roguelite. Quite unfortunately, many of the same core critiques of Synapse were equally true of nDreams’ last two big games: Fracked (2021) and Phantom: Covert Ops (2020).
It is a classic prognosis for the studio’s big action games at this point—not enough weapon, enemy, and encounter variety to really make the game sing.
For one, the game’s ‘levels’ feel completely homogenous. Combat isn’t meaningfully different from one to the next, which means every level feels essentially the same. Some destructible elements mix things up just a bit, but not enough to make levels feel dynamic and interesting.
And then there’s the mere four enemies: regular soldier dudes, kamikazes, hefty bois™, and one rather annoying flying enemy.
Some of the AI is actually pretty good. Soldier dudes will move around, use cover, flank you, and throw some suspiciously accurate grenades at your feet. Hefty bois will keep you pinned down behind cover, throw objects at you, and charge at you.
Image courtesy nDreams
On the other hand, the exploding kamikaze enemies feel consistently more unfair than anything, considering they usually explode at your feet even after you killed them, thanks to momentum carrying their corpses right into you.
And then there’s the flying enemies which are much more of a nuisance than an interesting threat… and animate so poorly (making them difficult to hit) that I’m not sure if they’re bugged or not.
Luckily my hatred for them made it that much more satisfying when I realized I could use my telekinesis to drop them into searing hot lava for an instant death.
Minimal enemy variety is backed by a lack of encounter and scenario variety. Every level is beaten by killing all enemies on the map; they all seem to spawn fairly randomly and tend to come from all sides, making it feel like a wave shooter most of the time. Not only does the level’s objective never vary, but there’s a real lack of meaningful encounter design, making most fights feel the same.
That’s not to say that Synapse isn’t fun. I enjoyed my first full run through the game, which took about three hours to complete. But from then on out the game asks you to continue doing the same things against the same enemies with the same weapon and abilities—but now at a harder difficulty.
That’s usually how roguelites go, but there just isn’t enough variety in the gameplay or build options in Synapse to reach that engaging feeling of ‘just one more run’ after you’ve completed your first. Even the promise of unlocking more narrative through during subsequent runs isn’t enough considering the narrative is a paper-thin radio drama. nDreams says players can expect to take around 12 hours to complete three runs, each at increasing difficulty, which will reveal all of the narrative. But I have to say that I wasn’t compelled to complete all three. All-in, I probably spent about five hours with the game before feeling like I’d seen it all.
Synapse has a really unique art style that I think they executed very well. The game runs well and generally sounds good too.
There’s no doubt the telekinesis is a more interesting and immersive way to interact with the game than shooting enemies at a distance. Being able to grip enemies with an invisible force, then toss them toward you while firing a flurry of bullets at them mid-air gives a strong feeling of direct control over the game’s virtual world, which helps anchor you to it.
Similarly, using your hand to pull yourself in and out of cover, then slapping your mag against a rock to load it into your gun, feel very ‘hands-on’.
Image courtesy nDreams
Aside from these elements, most of the game is fairly run-and-gun and there’s almost no other up-close interactions (which are the kind that tend to drive high levels of immersion). While the setting is neat (battling inside of someone’s brain, à la Inception), the story had zero intrigue, and served only as a rough premise for the action that unfolds in the game.
Comfort
Synapse is a run-and-gun game that doesn’t offer teleport. Aside from that, the essential comfort options are available, though I’m irked by the game’s implementation of snap turning, which is actually just a quick turn rather than a true snap turn (which tends to be more comfortable); Fracked had the very same issue.
Without teleport and with the expected pace of combat, Fracked might be a challenge for anyone that’s very sensitive to motion in VR, but otherwise feels largely average for comfort in a VR shooter.
One miscellaneous item worth noting here is that the game’s pistol tends to consistently shoot up and to one side, seemingly due to a lack of filtering on the weapon’s movement and the particular way the PSVR 2 controller tends to move in your hand when pulling the trigger in its ‘stiff’ state. This makes the pistol much less accurate than it seems it’s supposed to be.
During Meta’s Quest Gaming Showcase today developer nDreams and publisher Sony Pictures Virtual Reality announced that the long-awaited ghostbusting VR game, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, is set to launch this fall.
nDreams, also known for Fracked (2021), Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), and upcoming PSVR 2 exclusive Synapse, also released a new trailer featuring a few snippets of gameplay, showing off some of the game’s four-player co-op in action.
In it, we see some a bunch of the franchise’s iconic stuff, such as proton packs, ghost traps, P.K.E. meters, and even the Ecto-1.
If you’re just hearing about Ghostbusters’ first at-home VR title, here’s how the studio describes it:
Strap on your proton pack and step into the world of Ghostbusters in immersive virtual reality. Run your Ghostbusters HQ in a new city, San Francisco, and unravel a rich mystery in a new chapter for the Ghostbusters universe. Wield iconic equipment as you track, blast, and trap ghosts in gripping encounters across an extensive and engrossing campaign. Go it alone, or as a team with up to three friends in co-op to defeat a ghastly new threat – the Ghost Lord. Continue the Ghostbusters’ legacy, protect the city from fiendish ghosts, and experience all the humor and frights from the beloved franchise.
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is set to launch on Quest 2 and PSVR 2 at some point this fall. Notably, the game’s trailer was captured on PC, so it’s possible we may also see a release on SteamVR as well, although nDreams hasn’t confirmed as much.
In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on PSVR 2 here and Quest 2 here.
Having been exclusively building VR games since 2013, nDreams stands as one of the most veteran VR-exclusive game studios to date. And with more than 200 people, one of the largest too. The studio’s CEO & founder, Patrick O’Luanaigh, continues to bet his company’s future on the success of VR.
Speaking exclusively to Road to VR ahead of a presentation at GDC 2023, Patrick O’Luanaigh talks about the growing success of nDreams and why he’s still doubling down on VR.
Starting in 2013, O’Luanaigh has navigated his company from the earliest days of the modern VR era to now, which he believes is VR’s biggest moment so far—and growing.
Between the company’s own internal data and some external sources, O’Luanaigh estimates that VR’s install base is around 40 million headsets across the major platforms, excluding the recently launched PSVR 2. At least half of that, he estimates, is made up by 20 million Quest headsets.
That’s why he’s bulked up the company to some 200 employees, nearly doubling over the course of 2022 through hiring and studio acquisitions.
O’Luanaigh says, “this is the biggest we’ve ever been and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. […] In a decade of exclusively making VR games, we’ve never seen that growth before.”
O’Luanaigh knows well that content is key for getting players into their headsets, and to that end his efforts to scale the company are about building bigger and better VR content to keep up with the growth and expectations of the install base, he says.
“Setting up our fully-remote nDreams studios, Orbital and Elevation, was significant for us in establishing a powerful basis for developing multiple projects in parallel,” he says. “It gives us the specialism to develop the variety of VR titles, across multiple genres, that the growing market now demands.”
O’Luanaigh points to nDreams developed and published titles Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), Shooty Fruity (2020), Fracked (2021), and Little Cities (2022) as some of the most successful VR games the studio has launched thus far, with Phantom: Covert Ops specifically finding “important commercial success” on Quest 2.
With the release of those titles over the years and their ongoing sales, O’Luanaigh shares that nDreams doubled its year-over-year revenue over the last 12 months. And with multiple new projects in the works, including Synapse, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, and other (unannounced) projects, he believes the company is on track to more than double annual revenue again by 2024.
Phantom: Covert Ops | Image courtesy nDreams
Though he’s leading a company of 200 employees, O’Luanaigh calls himself a “massive VR enthusiast,” and is still very clearly in touch with makes VR such a unique and compelling medium.
He says his studio aims to build around five key pillars that make for compelling VR content:
Aspirational roleplay – first-person embodiment of appealing roles or characters
High-agency interaction – tactile 1:1 mechanics in a freely explorable world
Empowering wielding – Feel, hold, and use visceral weapons, tools, and abilities
Emotional amplification – Immersive situations that provoke strong, diverse feelings
Fictional teleportation – Presence within desirable locations, inaccessible in real life
And while O’Luanaigh could easily steer this studio away from VR—to chase a larger non-VR market—he continues to double down on VR as the studio’s unique advantage. Far from moving away from VR, his company is actively trying to bring others into the fold; O’Luanaigh says nDreams continues to expand its publishing operations.
“The success of Little Cities, which has just launched its free ‘Little Citizens’ update, has been a great validation of our investments into third-party publishing and we are actively on the lookout for more amazing indie developers to work with.”
With the scale that VR has now reached, O’Luanaigh believes the market is truly viable for indie developers. And that’s why he’s glad to see the rise of VR publishers (and not just his own company); having the benefit of longstanding expertise in the medium is crucial to shipping a shipping a quality VR title, and that’s why O’Luanaigh believes VR-specific publishers like nDreams will play an important role in bringing more developers and great content to VR.
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That expertise is increasingly building upon itself in the company’s VR games which have shown impressive mechanical exploration, giving the studio the chance to test lots of VR gameplay to find out what works.
Few in VR have had the gall to prove out something as seemingly wacky as a ‘VR kayak shooter’ and actually take it to market in a large scale production like Phantom: Covert Ops. And you can clearly see the lineage of a game like nDreams’ Fracked shining through in upcoming titles like Synapse. Though the game is an entirely new IP and visual direction, the unique Fracked cover system is making the leap to Synapse; a clear example of leveraging a now battle-tested mechanic to enhance future titles. But more than just a reskin of a prior shooter, nDreams continues to experiment with unique VR mechanics, this time promising to harness the power of PSVR 2’s eye-tracking to give players compelling telekinetic powers.
Synapse | Image courtesy nDreams
To that end, the studio’s lengthy experience in the medium is clearly an asset—and one that can only be earned rather than bought. Where exactly that experience will take them in the long run is unclear, but even after all the ups and downs the industry has seen, O’Luanaigh and nDreams remain all-in on VR.
nDreams, the studio behind Fracked (2021) and Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), announced Synapse, an upcoming action shooter exclusive to PSVR 2 that looks to evolve Fracked’s run-and-cover gameplay whilst making good use of the headset’s eye-tracking capabilities.
There’s still a lot to learn about Synapse, although nDreams says in its PS blogpost announcement that Fracked made a “perfect foundation to build upon with Synapse,” as the upcoming shooter looks to evolves the former’s core gameplay.
As a PSVR 2 exclusive, Synapse however is also slated to use Sense controllers in concert with the headset’s eye-tracking capabilities, something the studio head James Shepard says provides “enhanced aiming which equips players with pinpoint precision when targeting their telekinesis and combines with motion controls to make wielding telekinetic powers a full-body experience.”
In the teaser trailer we get a good look at a few mechanics too; you’ll be able to launch, levitate, and smash enemies through destructible environments.
The fast-paced run and gun style gameplay along with telekinetically moveable cover also shows just how related nDream’s upcoming shooter is to Fracked.
There’s no launch date yet, however nDreams says it’s coming exclusively to PSVR 2 later this year. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game here.
nDreams, the VR studio and publisher behind titles such as Fracked (2021) and Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), today announced it’s acquired long-time partner studio Near Light.
This marks the first such studio acquisition by nDreams, which follows a $35 million investment round secured back in March 2022.
Details of the acquisition are still thin on the ground, however nDreams says bringing the Brighton, UK-based Near Light closer into the fold will allow them to work on yet more “medium-defining games.”
In addition to running three of its own first-party studios, over the years nDreams has published a number of third-party VR titles, including Little Cities (2022) from Purple Yonder, as well as the Brighton-based Near Light’s VR titles Shooty Fruity (2018) and Perfect (2016).
Founded in 2016 with the launch of virtual travel experience Perfect, Near Light is headed by industry veterans Paul Mottram and Ben Hebb, known for their previous work at Wide Games, Kuju Brighton, and Zoë Mode.
“To be making our debut acquisition is yet another incredibly exciting milestone for nDreams,” added nDreams CEO, Patrick O’Luanaigh. “For other development studios with whom we are similarly aligned on vision and strategy, there’s certainly potential for more acquisitions in our future.”
“We’re really proud to be joining with nDreams and shaping the future of VR and AR games together, a new frontier with the opportunity to do things nobody has done before,” said Near Light co-founder Paul Mottram. “Near Light is very much aligned with the philosophy of Patrick and nDreams in terms of how we want to make games and build teams. It feels like the ideal fit for us.”
Near Light is currently developing an unannounced VR title, slated to be published by nDreams.
